Thoughtful Thursdays - Think About Next Year Now

I usually begin to talk more about next years sales targets and budgets with my clients at the beginning of their fiscal fourth quarter. If your business year follows the calendar year, guess what? It's time to get down to business and set your budgets for next year.

Before we get to next year, is this year shaping up as expected ? Is the business on track to meet profit expectations? Were you able to hole price in a year that may have been one of the most competitive for your business in recent history? Is your product and/or service mix what you want it to be? Is the business heading in the direction you want?

If you can answer yes to most of these questions them you deserve to be very pleased and should congratulate the business for having a great year.

Looking ahead to next year, what are your expectations? Once you have decided on the your business goals for 2010 you can get down to the details of how it might roll out.

As I have discussed in past postings, there are three ways to increase sales

• Greater sales to existing customers
• New sales to new customers
• Price increase

Speaking to profitability, do you expect your costs to increase or will you be working on cost reduction and productivity gains? It is not the worst case to have flat sales while realizing higher profits.

Getting back to sales, use a tool such as the dynamic model described in my Thoughtful Thursdays post from February 2009 to determine in which of the areas you expect sales will grow the most and begin to fill in the specific details on the tactics you put into action to achieve your objectives and goals.

Once you have developed your sales plan and believe in it, there is only one thing left to do. Nike said it best - JUST DO IT!

Good selling,
Richard